


Blood and Circuses

by templeremus



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action, Alien Planet, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, Captivity, Dark, Gen, Humans can be bastards, One Shot, Self-Sacrifice, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22692331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templeremus/pseuds/templeremus
Summary: Centuries into humanity's march across the stars, the Doctor's attempt to intervene in one of the species' more repellent practices sets him on a deadly collision course.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Blood and Circuses

The last fighters are still being cleared from the arena when the guards bring him in.  
  
Out of the corner of one eye he watches an attendant gather up the refuse by hand: abandoned spears, their points tinted to catch the sunlight; a length of headdress, bloodied, with hair still clinging to it. A second hireling dashes forward with two brightly-coloured streamers: blue for the Doctor, yellow for the man being led in from the opposite side. These will be dropped, together, to signal the start of the next bout. At the sight of them the crowd leaps to its feet, a great roiling wave of humanity giving voice to its delight. He thinks that he hears other tongues - other species - amid the cacophony, but he tunes them out along with the rest. They're a distraction, getting in the way of his thinking straight, their bodies blocking his view of the main exits. In the precious moments available he tallies his new surroundings against what he knows of the rabbit-warren below ground: the network of holding pens dividing the fighters from the show-beasts, the hidden trapdoors that will release the latter into the arena without compromising an individual cell's integrity.  
  
And, a mile away to the east, via tunnels just wide enough for a grown man, the locked entry-gate where he left Amy and Rory - along with the sonic screwdriver and half a gram of microexplosives. Admittedly as a plan it could do with a little fine-tuning, though he's devised madder schemes in his time, done more with less to hand. And the last few hours - the things that he glimpsed on his way to the surface, and the roars from the beasts out of the darkness - have hardened his resolve on one crucial point; there can be no surrender, no falling back. This stops, and it stops today.  
  
The streamers twist as they are let go, and the crowd erupts. Round one is in progress.  
  
It was dank inside the holding pen, but out in the open the sky is like burnished brass. In less than five minutes the Doctor can feel himself starting to tire, breathing harder, the ache in his calf muscles tightening into cramp. The people of this world are broader than the average Earth man - or Time Lord. The combat boots have been secured to his feet with straps, the helmet padded out so that it will turn when he moves his head. It's hot and cumbersome, but he doesn't waste time or energy trying to make adjustments. This isn't meant to be a competition, after all. It's bloodsport. The armour is purely there to ensure that the fight lasts long enough to be worth the price of entry.  
  
As luck would have it, his opposite number (all twenty-odd stone of him) seems almost as heavily weighed down. Every feint or turn is accompanied by the rasp of metal on metal, and a good thirty seconds elapse before he can work up the impetus to charge. The Doctor leaps clear of the first three onslaughts; moves to parry the fourth with his upraised shield. He grasps his mistake just a moment too late, as the shield's disk buckles like the crash zones on a car and he feels his arm give way. The force is utterly inhuman, the surprise of it so great that he doesn't even register the pain. The man - if that's what he is - keeps driving forward, kicking the shield aside and thrusting his club aloft to greet the ecstatic roar of the audience.  
  
It's only when he pivots, and the Doctor gazes upon a face the colour of ash, that realisation dawns. Biohacking is still technically illegal in these parts - the technology is crude, and the subject bleeds out more often than not - but for many the notion of a physical advantage will be hard to resist. In all likelihood there will be money, lots of it, riding on the outcome of each fight: sponsors with the means to upgrade their protégés, and the power to make authorities avert their eyes. It's a story that recurs on countless planets, in any era one cares to look: anywhere, in fact, where violence attracts a following.  
  
So. Unless this ends soon, one or both of them are almost certainly going to die. The key question is when.  
  
The Doctor really, _really_ hopes that those microexplosives are still viable.  
  
With the odds stacked as they are, the best (indeed the only) option is to keep moving. He makes a dash for the far side of the arena, covering as much ground as he can before attending to the armour that is now, without doubt, more of a burden than a help. He manages to get his right foot out of its straps - is still wrestling with the left when the next blow comes. The impact sends a bolt of pain across both shoulder-blades and leaves him sprawled face-first in the dust. Everything dulls and time seems to fold in on itself, pulling him down into the space where pain meets nothingness and the Universe stops turning.  
  
He's been there before. Part of him dares to hope that this end won't be so bad.  
  
Somewhere very far away, the ground begins to shake.  
  
He regains consciousness in fragments, each shard edged with a lucidity that, taken together, would be past endurance. The acrid smell of burning. Grit and blood in his mouth, the dirt sun-warmed under his fingernails. The above-space (not the sky, that is hidden from view, and he can't yet work out how to find it again) is in uproar. Feet dash over and past him, and somehow the mob's voice has changed, acquired a shrill top note of anguish. A man groans close by, and the Doctor rolls his head to look. The fighter, his erstwhile opponent, is also on the ground, his weapon missing. The explosion must have taken the neural networks offline, short-circuiting any and all implanted technology. The man's eyes are nothing but white and he is gasping like a landed fish, enormous fists locked into spasm.  
  
"Help him," the Doctor says - but nobody is paying attention now. Panic has well and truly seeded itself through the crowd and the quickest among them are already forcing their way out. Others are trying to gather their loved ones. Off in the middle distance a child wails, and he has a sudden vision of it, in this house of slaughter, reaching out its arms to be rescued.  
  
A shout, more footsteps. Two hands meet over his breastbone - Amy's voice in his ear, "Sorry sorry _sorry_ " - and haul him up. He's closed his eyes, hoping for oblivion, but the abrupt movement wrenches him back and he chokes on a scream. Somebody else, in too much of a hurry to be gentle, seizes both his feet and he is lifted into a handcart: the kind the attendants use to dispose of the heavier corpses. Rory jogs alongside, throwing out questions, breaking off only to shout a warning or exhortation at whoever is doing the pulling. Though the questions seem like the kind the Doctor should be answering the words don't make sense at first; their meaning has been scrambled by the din all around them and the pain that's getting harder to ignore by the minute and he wants very much for this world to disappear, for it to collapse under the weight of its own barbarity.  
  
"Hey." Rory is gripping the Doctor's fingers; Amy holds one side of the cart, trying her best to steady it. "It worked. They're out, Doctor. Look."  
  
It takes him a moment to see where his friend is pointing: the cart is picking up speed and his eyes keep losing focus. A multi-legged shape is gaining on them, shaking its head from side to side in an attempt to rid itself of the harness still fastened into place. Blue-grey fur, the colour of a bruise, and violet eyes set wide apart like a horse's. Some of the other running figures have slowed to keep pace with the cart; he spots a breastplate, the glint of a spear. A few are whooping, but most are quiet, their faces slick with effort and set in grim determination.  
  
Over Rory's shoulder, Amy points the sonic at a gate up ahead. It opens, and they plunge into the deep and lovely dark.


End file.
